


The Law of Entropy

by ghibly101



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Asexual Relationship, Forced Prostitution, Hurt No Comfort, Multi, Second person POV, Self Harm, Substance Abuse, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:55:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2679911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghibly101/pseuds/ghibly101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything falls apart eventually.</p><p>They bring the berries to their mouths, but no announcement is made.<br/>That kid had been too good for her anyways.<br/>Only one canon sounds and you look back just in time to see her retching on the ground, expelling as much of the poison as she can.<br/>What a way to reinforce a point.</p><p>Katniss survives the Games. Peeta doesn't. Haymitch doesn't deal with the aftermath so much as observe it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haymitch- The Hanging Tree

The announcement is made.  
There can only be one victor, and you knew this was coming. You've known since the very moment the opposite had been stated.  
You pour god-knows-what down your throat and keep your eyes on the screen. You owe them that much.  
You watch as the two tributes stare at their weapons, you watch as they're tossed away, and you watch as Katniss, brave, stubborn, broken Katniss, pulls those damn berries out.  
You watch as they hold them out to the audience like a suicide note, hands stained red just in time for their bloodless deaths. It's a gambit on Katniss's part and blind faith on Peeta's.  
You watch as they bring the berries to their mouths.  
No announcement is made.  
You look away.  
That kid had been too good for her anyways.  
Only one canon sounds and you look back just in time to see her retching on the ground, expelling as much poison as she can.  
What a way to reinforce a point. 

You reflect on the fact that you've finally gotten a kid through the games.  
You pour the rest of what you have identified as absinthe down your throat and spend the next few hours clutching the porcelain bowl of a toilet.  
You wonder how long it will be before they start selling her.

As you begin to leave the victory tour's grand finale alone- in contrast to your accompanied arrival- you sigh and pull the cork from your flask.  
You hate it when you're right.

It's the final interview and Katniss is draped in a black mourning gown. Her veil shifts colors like an ember someone won't stop blowing on that's steadfastly refusing to come back alight.  
She is the coal, slowly shrinking and sooner or later, whether or not her body will still be breathing, you know she's going to die.  
There is not a single spark left in her.  
She smiles grimly at a poorly executed joke and makes a thinly veiled reference to murdering everyone in front of her in the context of the game and you can feel her noose tightening.  
Peeta is her hanged man, and midnight's going to come eventually. 

She arrives in Victor's Village with little fanfare and promptly raids your liquor cabinet.  
She throws up in your sink and leaves you to deal with the mess. 

She's sitting on your couch and drinking your moonshine which she actually pays for now. He buys it, but she always contributes her fair share of the cash.  
"He should have won," is all she says.  
"That there's why he didn't," is all you do.  
The alcohol burns as you swallow it and you realize that you don't know when she stopped cringing. Instead she gulps it down like air and she is drowning beneath the weight of what she hasn't said. 

You don't see her for over a week and when you do, she is paler and frailer and there are bandages swathing both of her forearms. You water down the whiskey and she spits it in your face, finds the vodka and makes you stand there as she downs almost the entire bottle in defiance.  
She pops her stitches while hurling on your floor and you have to drag her across the street to have her mother patch her up. 

It's the Victor's tour and you make sure the train's well stocked.  
It is, extremely so.  
By the end, you two are running low anyway. 

She reads her speeches like eulogies of people she didn't like. The only open emotion she shows is in District Eleven where, in lieu of a gratuitous monologue, she simply says thank you, kisses three fingers to salute, and whisks herself away before the peacekeepers can. 

The first dress she's given is sleeveless. Three thick, jagged lines streak up each arm and by the time she is at the dinner table, someone has pulled her into a pair of long white gloves.  
White doesn't suit her. 

In the Capitol celebration, she gets sick without the aid of the oh-so-helpful flutes laid out at her disposal. She meets Seneca Crane and you're fairly sure that she takes great, vindictive pleasure in puking on his expensive shoes.  
The next time you see her, she is straddling Finnick Odair's lap, tears dripping down her face as she attempts to ingest his tongue.  
You leave the victors with all they have left to lose and nothing to gain be.  
There was no leverage for you.  
This was one indignity you had been spared. 

She only seems to spend two weeks of three in District Twelve. Rich, decadent jewelry starts to pile up in her room and one night you find her dropping a blue pill into her mouth.  
She calls it euphoria and says it makes her clean.  
You pull her into your chest as you are reminded by force that she has yet to turn seventeen. She still hasn't lost her mother or her sister, but you see what she was turned into and you begin to wonder whether their deaths were the best thing that could have happened to you.  
Beneath her eyes are shadows like coal dust smears, her eyes look so glassy they seem false, and her spine protrudes far enough out of her skin that she could impale any who dared to get too close.  
She is disintegrating beneath your hands and you only leave when you feel her pressing open mouthed kisses down your throat with far too much experience.  
She calls "What's wrong?" after you with genuine confusion in her voice and you mourn how cracks in your heart let the alcohol leak away. 

The Quarter Quell is announced. As a reminder of the comparative innocence of the civilian casualties, the age group is lowered to between ten and fourteen.  
Your tributes are a crippled miner's daughter, fourteen and waifish, and a ten-year-old orphan boy. Chrysanthemum Smith and Tommy Crawford bear the resemblance of the Seam: skinny with high cheekbones, olive skin, and dark hair. To anyone unfamiliar with this branch of genetics, they could pass for siblings. Neither stands a chance. 

She tosses the girl a flask and calls the boy sweetheart. Apparently if a teenager's about to die, she'll spend a night drinking with them. She sends the boy to bed with a "Sleep well, kid." and escorts Chrys to her own room.  
When you confront her in the morning just to make sure, she stares at you with hurt in her eyes. She doesn't hit you or insult you or demand an explanation as to how you could thing so low of her, she just looks sad. 

In the Capitol, they ask where she is going when she leaves in the evening and you tell them that she has a date to keep.  
She comes to the tribute building around six am high as a kite, disheveled like she was just pried loose from a hanging branch. Around her neck is an obscenely large ruby engraved with a mockingjay. You're not even sure she knows it's there.  
She comes to mentor the two kids anyhow and they watch with nowhere near her spunk as their mentor starts coming down. She had forced you into sobriety for the games, they just stared on in horror.  
She snaps at them but teaches them more than you did. 

It's the day of the evaluations and Katniss is the most sober you've seen her in a while.  
She just cries for three hours then leaves to find Finnick. 

Chrys and Tom both die in the bloodbath. 

The days from then on include a lot of vomit cleared away by the avoxes and you learn just how 'desirable' this seventeen year old girl is.  
She has an overflowing chest of jewelry that she doesn't wear, simply spending several hours a day mangling it until she pries the gems free to place them in a velvet drawstring bag, adding the metals to whichever heap they belong to: platinum, silver, and the various categories of gold. When fine vintages of various liquor and display boxes of colorful pills start turning up and you realize that she has gotten the clientele to assuage their guilt by providing her the means to get through the night. 

You pity the avoxes a little, given how many times she has lost her stomach's contents. 

Katniss supplements most of her calories through alcohol and the rest of them through fresh fruit. She doesn't eat the prepared food of the Capitol unless she's high on the pink pills. They make her hungry. 

The victor of the games is a fourteen year old girl from Two. She looks like Chrys but in possession of a fuller, more muscular frame and four working limbs. 

You go back to District Twelve and apparently Katniss will join you in a month. There is a long client list waiting for her. 

You talk to Prim, who apparently knows nothing but what she's guessed. The fact that she guessed so much correctly pains you a little. 

Katniss tells you that the only people who win in the games are the ones who lose.  
You notice the scars spelling the words "are you?" on the back of each hand and you're inclined to agree.


	2. Finnick- Little Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You hear yourself in the answer. You know she means you to.  
> "Depends."  
> "On what?"  
> "On what you know."
> 
> My, Little Red, you think. What big teeth you have. 
> 
> (You are not falling apart.  
> You are not falling apart.  
> You are not falling apart.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read and is reading this, it means a lot. I'm thinking that I may finish this story next chapter and start a sequel, so tell me if you'd be interested.

You're at the final stop of her Victory Tour. You're officially a Capitol citizen these days, a commodity in such high demand that there's no point in living back in Four.  
When you first see her, Katniss is swallowing a severely uncomfortable expression away. She fusses with the sheer viridian napkin that's trying to pass for a dress, futilely attempting to pull it down to a relatively modest point. There are some things that are just cruel, and her stylist is one of them.  
Half hour later, she looks like a different person, determined and, more importantly, furious. Her eyes land on you and she she pulls you by the hand straight out of the party. You don't ask how she knows where to lead you to find a bed and she doesn't explain. Instead, she strips down naked and simply stands there, arms crossed until you do the same. You pluck an ornamental sugar cube off a dessert display on the bedside table and put it in her mouth.  
"Tell me a secret?"  
"I tried to drown my sister's cat when I was younger." She says with the utmost sincerity.  
You can't help it. You laugh.

The next time Katniss comes to you, you're surprised. Since the Victory Tour, you have only ever glimpsed her at the parties mandatory to the lifestyle. The meet and greets, free trials, kiss and ditch dates to attract potential buyers and finalize sales.  
They're parties that neither of you get to go home from and that neither of you leave sober.  
She turns up at your doorstep pale and shaking, fuck knows how she found you. You don't want to know what cocktail of drugs she's on. Bruises line her frame, around her wrists, up her arms, across her hips, trailing beneath her clothes.  
You pull her inside and strip her shirt off, pulling out a salve of yours and slathering it generously across her skin.  
It's hideously expensive and a repeat gift from boring tailor for unimportant rich people. He has nothing but the most boring gossip and when people can't keep you well informed or entertained, you take great pleasure in having them spend fortunes on things that make them uncomfortable and introspective.  
You've lost several regular clients like this.  
Katniss grabs your wrist and pulls you down to stay with her as the blue splotches shrink into themselves and the ache recedes back into her soul from her bones. You hug her curled form into your chest, the sticky paste gluing the two of you together. She snorts but doesn't pull away and it's oddly comfortable.

You cook her breakfast and she smiles at you over spiked coffee. She declares your bacon the best thing she's ever tasted and squeezes you fresh tangerine juice, saying it's better like that. Apparently she'd developed a taste for the fruit and there was no reason not to indulge.  
It's only an hour later that you tell her you have to go: a prep team's awaiting you for an important evening and your heart breaks, just a little, when she pulls out a mint tin and drops three blue pills into her hand, swallowing them dry before offering you the tin like a child would a pack of gum.

You're both at a party and someone is trying to yank her away by the arm. The man's had one too many surgeries to remove wrinkles and the result is unnerving, to say the least. She starts to struggle and her gaze locks on you.  
She's drunk and high and likely about to pass out or throw up.  
She slurs out, "Sorry babe, got an appointment," at him vaguely, then promptly sticks her tongue down your throat.  
You sigh inwardly, but you could really use a night off and you hadn't really thought of this as an option. You feel weird kissing her like she's a client but you don't want to kiss her like she's Annie and you are too not-sober to think about what way works for this purpose but isn't either.  
You deepen it then grab her thighs and hoist her up. Her ankles lock together behind your back and your hands slide beneath her ass as support. The people around you wolf whistle and you disengage your mouth from hers to ask if you should stop because "I'd really prefer you don't get sick if we're doing this. I have yet to taste the regurgitations of others and would like to keep it that way."  
She bites your lip then says, "Nah. Charlize has great antiemetics." before pulling you right back down.

You stumble into a shuttlecar and go back to your apartment- apparently she had to entertain in her own space due to some agreement with fucking Snow, and that means your apartment it is.  
She sleeps in your bed and doesn't try to do anything but hold you. It's a rare experience. It's nice, and it reminds you too much of Annie, who is safe in District Four, safe, safe, safe, safe, Annie is safe. She has to be.  
Is she?  
You carefully extricate yourself from the bed to grab a tablet to organize your next trip home- leaving the Capitol was an 'on proper authorization only' business.  
When you come back she's tossing and turning and quite clearly having a nightmare. Shaking her awake lands you with a punch to the face that you probably deserve through merit of sheer stupidity.

In the morning she pops open a tin labeled with an ornate C and drops two green pills down her throat before raiding your fruit bowl. She sits on the kitchen counter and swings her legs like a schoolgirl.  
You watch in mild horror as she peels a piece of skin off of a lemon before biting into it, reveling in your shock.  
You were never poor enough that you learned how to eat anything; and sour was the one end of the spectrum you just couldn't stand. She doesn't seem to mind.  
You toss a sugar cube at her anyway and ask her if she has any secrets for you and, for once, you aren't demanding currency exchange. She is welcome to your bed, if she so desires. You have no clue when that happened.  
She says she doesn't have any, that you just have to ask the rights questions.  
You ask her if she loved Peeta and she walks straight out the door.

You realize that it wasn't really a secret anyway.

You're at another god forsaken party and she's there too. A woman- pretty, not too old- sidles up to her and places a hand on the small of her back.  
"Girl on Fire, could I ask for a kiss?" You're suddenly glad you don't have to deal with having a nickname.  
Something changes in Katniss's face and she smiles. "Well that depends, Maisie," she whispers conspiratorially, and you when you read her lips saying 'Maisie,' actually slightly awed that she can remember her regulars' names. "What did Connery do to piss off Snow?"  
The Capitol woman, who is wearing fuschia lace over orange lingerie, lights up. It's hard to read her lips so you move to keep her face in sight. "He slept with his grandniece."  
Katniss looks feral, all of a sudden. She pushes a giggling Maisie into a wall and kisses her hard.  
"Would you be up for setting my bed on fire tonight?" That isn't the worst pick up line you've heard, but it's right down there.  
You hear yourself in the answer. You know she means you to.  
"Depends."  
"On what?"  
"On what you know." And with that, she peels the woman off the wall and slides a hand to her ass. Katniss leans in to whisper something into her ear and when she tosses her head back laughing, she winks at you.  
 _My, little red_ , you think. _What big teeth you have._

Katniss is unconscious on the floor of your kitchen, covered in her own puke.  
You aren't even surprised.

When she wakes up, the first thing she groans is, "Stole a key. Hope you don't mind." There's a pause.  
"If you do," she decides, "too damn bad."

Katniss is on your couch. She's curled up defensively, feet on the cushions and sipping straight from a bottle of rum.  
"Who paid extra to have you first?"  
"Some smarmy fucker in banking." Asellus Byron. Of course. He liked them young and innocent. She grins a little. "Of course, he didn't get me first."  
You did.  
You had wondered why she had consented to wear virtually nothing to that event, you'd heard she was close with her stylist and the pieces stopped adding up.  
Evidently, she shares the idea that giving people what they paid for minus why they want it is the best kind of irony and the price of some dignity she'd lose anyway was worth the ability to rub it in.  
You approve and toast her.  
She slugs back her rum and asks who bought you.  
You shrug. "Smarmy fucker actually got me first."

The tabloids love the two of you. The Girl on Fire and the man of water. The names are ridiculous and Katniss brings you a drink coaster with a red press bingo board on it. Your favorite square says 'gratuitous details of your supposed sex life.'

It isn't long before some obscenely rich couple gets the two of you for a night.  
When Katniss leads the husband to the bedroom, smiling coyly, you take the wife into the kitchen. You strip her and play with the jewels embedded into her skin until she tells you that the cosmetics company she works for subtly poisons certain batches of District One's foundation to make them need even more and branch further into their restorative creams.

In the morning, Katniss peels the two of you out of a bed larger than some rooms you've seen to hand you a list of broadly unidentified political assassinations over the last five years.  
You pout at her and tell her she took the easier target to which she dares you to do better.

She leaves with last nights dress draped over one arm and wearing one of the wife's with actual diamonds sewn into it.

You see her wear it again, minus the gems. You wonder what on earth she did with them.  
It is definitely worth it when you see its original owner scowling at her.

She unofficially moves into your apartment. She doesn't stay there most nights, but she's there during the day for almost two weeks a month. You know she's eventually going to have to move into the Capitol like you did. Probably once she gets a bit older. Combined with the fact that people feel less guilty when people are of age, the fact that her currently staying in Twelve commoditizes her time means that there'll be an influx in her list of names very soon.

She admits to having slit her wrists after the Games.  
You hold her and tell her that you tried to hang yourself, once, and make a miniature noose out of the twine you keep around.

It's the Quarter Quell and your Tributes are eleven and thirteen, scared and angry and doomed. You mentor them precisely once and leave the other victors to deal with them.  
If you learned their names, it would just be another dead pair of words anyway.  
They score an seven and and three on the evaluations.  
The girl can throw spears with dead aim, and dies on the second night with a knife in her throat and ashes by her feet.  
The boy is agile and can hide for days. An arrow hits his back as he flees the bloodbath.

One morning you come home to Katniss bleeding out in your bathtub. Guessing by the amount of blood, it can't have been more than ten minutes since she slit her wrists threefold.  
She was giving herself a chance that she couldn't call herself a coward for, maybe not even consciously. Smart girl.  
You trace lines long gone up your forearms.

You bind her arms with strips of your shirt because towels aren't ideal in this situation. You bandage her like a professional because these things come in handy and you keep her head in your lap while you wait for the med team. You are not falling apart.  
You are not falling apart.  
You are not falling apart.

Katniss is the embodiment of entropy, isn't she?

She home in a day against medical recommendation and takes four clients before walking out and not coming back for five days.  
When she does, her arms are seamless, along with the rest of her.  
She's never going to get those four clients again, you know.  
You wonder just how much of her reveled in the awkward atmosphere and how much of her was just disgusted.

She tells you she has to stay sober for the next month because they'd fucked with her internal organs and Prim's life was waved right in front of her face in case she'd forgotten. Apparently the chemicals to deal with the damage done by alcohol and drug poisoning do not react well with alcohol and drugs.  
She wasn't staying in her apartment for a myriad of reasons and yours had floor to ceiling liquor shelves in a room it shares with a wine collection that's racks span a good three fourths of it and home had people not allowed to see like this, Haymitch excluded to hell and back. Apparently she was being provided a 'temporary residence' to live out her sentence in isolation.  
You send Snow a message to tell him that if your 'meetings' for the next month were not postponed, you would not be very surprised if she succeeded next time.  
It is sobering to realize there most likely will be a next time.

He sends you a picture of Annie crying in your bed, taken through the window of your empty house in Victor's Village, and a list of names.  
You don't get to see her until six weeks later when she is back from District Twelve, skeletal and exhausted and watch as she finds the most expensive bottle of wine you have and drains it.  
She smiles like she has swallowed heaven and it is the most honest emotion you've seen on her in a long time.

The days are fairly monotonous after that. Party, drink, fuck, drugs, sleep, rinse, repeat.  
You cut Katniss down from a noose once and confiscate her drugs thrice in the next two months.  
She sends you home on a shuttle car and sleeps with your clients when you get too fucked up.  
You make it work.

She stops going back to District Twelve.

It's the girl from Two's Victory Tour. Katniss watches the speeches televised, sipping whiskey like water and you know that even when she's off at a client's, she's sitting on their couch doing the exact same thing.  
Cinna sends her a dress for the final party, glowing like embers and face left bare, to Capitol standards. She had dramatic eyeliner and there was something not quite herself about her features, but she looked like an average human as much as a victor in the Capitol could.

You watch as she takes Two's hand- Katniss knows her name, but you don't- and leads her out of the party.  
Two is in flats and the frilliest pink dress you've ever seen and you know that the stylist is not in the habit of making subtle attempts to piss off influential Capitol citizens.

You spot them again an hour later and Two is missing her underskirt and most of the bows on her dress and her face is painted more heavily, colors dark and bright. She's gained a good ten years. You wonder when Katniss learned how to do it herself and how on earth she snuck makeup and a seam ripper in here when she didn't even bring a bag.

Two is flushing hard beneath her foundation and her updo is off kilter. You remember Katniss dragging you upstairs for an ultimately pointless gesture and wonder how busy Katniss will find herself when Snow catches ahold of the media putting two and two together.

The answer is very.

When you ask her where the makeup came from, she laughs and throws a bra at your face.  
She comes home the next morning to find her bed made neatly and covered in a near geometric pattern of your underwear.

You hardly see her for the next six months and when you do she's usually bruised. Some people like it rough and if you've learned one thing, it's that Katniss loves shoving the inhumanity of what they're doing right in their faces.  
You have to wonder how many people won't come to her again.

Katniss comes home one night distraught, utterly distressed and deliriously high, and asks why you care so much.  
She asks if you love her and you tell her yes.

She starts slugging back flavored liquor and tells you that she loves you too.

She asks you if you want to fuck her and you tell her no.

She looks so confused and asks if it's the bruises or the bones.

You tell her neither and put her to bed, kissing her softly before you go.

Katniss is a chisel chipping away at your heart, and she's the only damn reason you know you still have one.


	3. Johanna- Side Effects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumor has it that Finnick and Katniss live together now.  
> Rumor has it that they're in some fucked up relationship.  
> Rumor has it Katniss sometimes gets horrifically and amusingly intoxicated at parties.  
> Rumor has it that she's great in the sack, as several people pipe up to testify.  
> It's not until some woman with bubblegum pink skin titters and says that it's awfully expensive but she knew someone who could get you on the waiting list if you wanted that everything clicks.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much. A sequel is a serious possibility, but not a definite at this point. If you'd like one, definitely say so, it definitely makes a difference.

You see Katniss Everdeen in person first when she drags Finnick out of the ballroom by the hand and you are suddenly consumed by an all-encompassing loathing for her.  
She's here in the Capitol and look at her loving the spotlight.  
Watch her as she makes her rounds, screwing everyone she pleases after she killed her star-crossed boyfriend.  
You wonder how many tabloids she keeps on her bedside table, reading in the evening to giggle at like nothing is wrong.  
Fuck her. She's just another one of them.  
Fuck her. 

At the next Games, you watch a willow tree with a skeletal face swallow brightly colored pills like candy and and shots of hard liquor like air and you etch a fucking picture of her, a bad one on good wood. A dark-haired girl overlayed with a withered skeleton looks into a mirror to see nothing but a pretty face. You call it The Side Effects of Prolonged Vanity and burn it in your fireplace. 

You catch Katniss alone in the women's toilets and she's sitting on a sink, emptying a flask into her throat. She tosses four pills back and sips again to wash them down.  
You call her a lot of things. Pathetic, a slut, vain, disgusting, a bitch.  
She shrugs and says "Yeah." 

Over the next six months, a lot of carvings find their way into your hearth. 

You see her again doing the same damn thing with the new victor, gently guiding her away with an arm over her shoulder and whispering into her ear and that is just sick. You're genuinely disgusted with her, and you want to cave her skull in.  
You find Finnick because of last year and he tells you Katniss isn't that bad, that you don't grasp her or the situation and you're a little repulsed by him, too.  
You feel betrayed. 

You spend the rest of the night, playing it up and asking about last year's victor.  
Rumor has it that Finnick and Katniss live together now.  
Rumor has it that they're in some fucked up relationship.  
Rumor has it Katniss sometimes gets horrifically and amusingly intoxicated at parties.  
Rumor has it that she's great in the sack, as several people pipe up to testify.  
It's not until some woman with bubblegum pink skin titters and says that it's awfully expensive but she knew someone who could get you on the waiting list if you wanted that everything clicks.  
They're whoring her out.

You survived the games to come back to a sister that's was really the only parental figure you had. You were given an offer and told them to fuck off. They killed her and that was the end of that.  
You are so fucking idiotic.  
You're about to go find her without really thinking about what you're going to say before remembering that she's off sleeping with a traumatized kid.  
This is so fucked up. 

You find Finnick instead and ask him what she's really like. He pinches the flare of his champagne flute and you watch it trickle out the sides, dripping down his hands and onto the floor. 

You meet her later and she looks blank, glassy-eyed like a doll in make up.  
"Sorry."  
"It's alright." 

You go home and find the most cracked piece of wood you have and etch a child burning up into it.

It's another six months before you see her again and this time you don't think she's even drunk, just very, very hungover. You bring her coffee spiked with whiskey as an olive branch.  
She smiles at you and curls up, feet braced on the sofa.  
"Tell me a secret?"  
"Hell no, fire girl. You gotta buy me dinner first."  
"It's five am, axe girl, I'll take you out for breakfast."  
"Dinner or no deal." 

She takes you out and spends a ridiculous amount of money getting people dragged right out of bed to make you plum stew by six. The sun hasn't even risen yet and you realize Katniss is probably insane.  
She has a sip here and there, but mostly just watches you eat.  
"If I was smarter, I'd be you right now."  
"If I were smarter, I'd be dead." She stops, taps a hand on her cheek. "If I were dumber, I'd be Haymitch."  
You pause.  
"All I can think of is you with the scruff."

Your male tribute tries to join the bloodbath. Idiot. He survives, embedding axes in tributes with heavy thunks and the cracks of shattered bone but you watch the blood oozing from his stomach and know he's not going to live for very much longer.  
A career breaks his neck before midnight.  
Your girl fucks up her leg falling out of a tree, climbs up again, and stays there. 

The arena is tiny and by the time the night is out, half the tributes are dead. Between you and Katniss you've got two live kids and two dead ones.  
You've dubbed Twelve's girl Kat junior because she bears the Seam's resemblance and the determination, there is something in her mannerism that reminds you of her. 

You know what it is when Kat stumbles across Diane and gives her a drink from her waterskin and binds her swollen ankle. 

Diane is tall and gangly, seventeen and clearly underfed. Kat is fifteen at most and tiny, like she's a condensed version of the average human. She's the antithesis of Diane, short and angry and intense. Diane was never going to live. It's like someone stretched out a twelve year old and kicked the result like a puppy. 

Kat kills for her, stabs a career right in the back and gets knocked into a tree for her troubles. The guy goes down but not before her ribs crunch sickeningly. 

You revise your opinion of Diane when she comes across District Three's only surviving tribute, spying on them from the bushes and without hesitating snaps his neck. 

A day goes by when no one dies then everything goes to shit. 

Katniss doesn't sleep, she just watches the games, drinking and drugged up to the gills. Eventually, you pull her off of the couch and shove her, fully clothed, into the bathtub. Her soaked clothes cling to her, erasing the image of weight that was never there. The effect, combined with her disgruntled expression, makes her look like a wet cat.  
She starts stripping without a single thought as to your presence and it's not the first naked body you've seen, far from it, but she is young and emaciated and you watch her shoulder blades shift beneath her skin like you'd regard a wild animal.  
She asks if you're waiting for a show, because she'd give you one if you asked. She sounds like she's talking about sharing snacks she's so matter of fact about it.  
You leave the room. 

Kat turns out to be named Arya and suddenly they are in the last four. They don't split up and you know this won't end well.  
Katniss gets them sponsors and you try not to think too hard about how she amassed to money to land them with poison. 

Katarya coats her knife with it and gives it to Diane before pulling a second out of her backpack, scavenged off of the career.  
Diane asks what the plan is from there and you know everything's going to fall apart. 

Everything ends in a bloodbath while you aren't looking, and you don't bother to watch the highlights. Katniss is curled on the couch, comatose. It's a little while before Finnick, looking urgent and harried, drags you away by the wrist to show you something on his tablet. 

The clip's short. Katarya and Diane are standing in the woods, bloody and beaten half to hell. Diane's face is entirely swathed in dirty bandages and Kat has a bleeding stump where her hand should be. A body lays between them, mutilated beyond recognition.  
A canon sounds and nothing happens.  
They collapse to the ground, panting and bleeding. Kat starts to one-handedly pull out bandages, taking Diane by the wrist to guide her where she wants her to go. She ties a tourniquet and you suddenly are struck with déjà vu.  
The bandaging job is surprisingly clean given Diane's working blind.  
They rest against a tree, passing a water bottle back and forth.  
A man in a peacekeepers uniform walks into the screen and shoots Kat in the head. 

It's only just then, as she's falling, Diane blindly reaching for her, screaming, that you notice the glinting golden pin on her shirt. 

The tablet goes black. 

Two days later, a man is in your apartment. Katniss has her media face on and it looks fucking strange, her voice is sickly sweet and she sounds like she'd enjoy nothing more than burying him in a shallow grave.  
He introduces himself as Plutarch Heavensbee and says that he thinks the four of you possess a shared interest.


End file.
